BALI - Land Grab Blamed for Rapid Erosion of Island's Agricultural Character.

Balidiscovery.com, (3/3/2007)

Government targets to increase local rice production in Bali as part of a national plan to grow 2 million more tons of rice nation-wide in 2007 are going to be hard to achieve. In the case of Bali, the major obstacles to more rice production are lower-than-average rainfall and the uncontrolled conversion of agricultural lands to other uses.

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AUSTRALIA - India described as Australia’s star performer in terms of arrivals

eTN, 23-2-2007

India has been described as Australia’s star performer in terms of arrivals, with 83,700 visitors from India for the year ending December 2006, an increase of 23 percent over last year. This development emerged as the Australian Bureau of Statistics disclosed its international visitor arrivals data.
Tourism authorities acknowledged that the number of Indian arrivals to Australia is relatively small but the trend of increase in arrivals was sustained as strong growth was also experienced in 2004 and 2005.
Overall, there were 5.5 million visitor arrivals to Australia in 2006, an increase of one percent relative to 2005.
Tourism Forecasting Council estimates 91,000 visitors from India in the year ending 2007.
Tourism Australia’s focus in India is to continue converting the strong preference to visit Australia into actual intention to visit. The strategy involves promoting a variety of unique Australian experiences to Indian travelers that serve not just as an invitation to visit, but also give them exciting reasons to visit.

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SINGAPORE - Visitor Arrivals for January 2007

ASIATravelTips.com, 28 February 2007

In January 2007, Singapore welcomed 825,000 visitors, registering a 7.4% growth over the same period a year ago. This was a record high for the month of January. Visitor days were estimated to reach 2.9 million days, an increase of 10.3% in comparison to January 2006.
Indonesia (158,000), P.R. China (76,000), Australia (68,000), India (52,000), and the United Kingdom (52,000) were Singapore’s top five visitor-generating markets in January 2007. These markets accounted for 49% of total visitor arrivals for the month.
Strong growth was registered in January 2007, where Singapore gazetted hotels generated Sin$138.2 million in room revenue, representing an increase of 44.1% over January 2006. This was a record high for the month of January.

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